


You can't have it all

by halfeatenmoon



Category: Zoids
Genre: Gen, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-06-02
Updated: 2006-06-02
Packaged: 2017-10-18 05:45:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/185649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/halfeatenmoon/pseuds/halfeatenmoon





	You can't have it all

There were few better things in life, thought Marianne, than having a quiet cup of tea.

Sometimes she didn’t know how she’d survive Sunday afternoons without tea. There is a time on every Sunday afternoon when a disturbing restlessness sets in. When you feel silly for trying to bake a cake for your kids when you have a cook who does it a thousand times better. When you feel stupid for trying to cheer up your esteemed husband, knowing that you’re little more than the annoying mother of his children to him. When you begin to realise what a useless bit of ceremonial fluff you really are. When time seems to be running away from you, trailing behind it the exquisitely despairing feeling that everything you’ve done with your life has been futile, irrelevant, nothing more than a business transaction, and a failed one at that, and that you were so stupid that you went along with it voluntarily because even though you knew, somewhere, that he didn’t give a damn about you, you still… you still hoped… still wanted to… because… because you l-

When you just needed to calm down, to centre, and to have a cup of tea.

“Four down: twelve-letter word meaning ‘ancient’,” said Rudolf, chewing on the end of his pen.

They were sitting on the verandah, having afternoon tea and watching the children play in the garden. Marianne ignored her husband, munching on a scone and watching Tanya and Freddy covering their older brother, Matthias, in mud. When she didn’t answer, Rudolf looked up, followed her gaze and smiled indulgently at his children. Marianne often thought that it would be easier to accept if he neglected the children, or at least if he paid less attention to them in favour of his work, as fathers often did. But he was besotted with all his children, and frequently put pressing work aside in order to spend more time with them. It would be easier if he ignored them, thought Marianne, because then she might be able to bring herself to dislike him, on their behalf, instead of hurting every time she saw him with them, loving them so much, making her love him even more and reminding her, so harshly, that he would never love h-

“Prehistoric?” a passing guard wondered, when Rudolf wondered aloud about the solution to four-down again.

“That has eleven letters. You need a word with twelve,” said Marianne automatically, without looking up.

“How do you know that?” Rudolf asked, as he usually did several times every day whilst doing the crossword.

Marianne shrugged. “I don’t know. I just do. Maybe because the only board game my parents ever bought me was Scrabble.”

“Good thing they were so stingy about buying toys, then,” said Rudolf, with a grin, “I’d never finish a single crossword otherwise.”

“Well, at least there’s one thing I’m good for,” she replied. She kept her eyes steadily on her teacup, and didn’t bother trying to hide the bite in her voice.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw an odd look on Rudolf’s face – confusion? Hurt? Guilt? He opened his mouth for a moment, about to say something to her, but abruptly turned back to the crossword balanced on his knee with aggressive nonchalance. It was almost funny.

Marianne had sometimes heard people remark that it was hard to believe that Rudolf Gerhard Zeppelin III, one of the greatest emperors in Guylos history, could concentrate so intensely on and get so excited about the Sunday crossword. It could be a comical sight, and sometimes he was almost childish in his interest, but Marianne didn’t see what was so strange about that. Surely they all had moments in which they relaxed while doing something simple, and moments in which they acted childishly, although not necessarily. She had no trouble with that duality in her husband. What she had trouble believing was that he could sit there doing the crossword with his wife and watching his children in the garden, that he could so easily pretend to be that perfect family, when she knew fully well that every other night he was away from the palace on ‘official business’, sharing a bed with another woman, [or, she suspected lately, another man]–

Marianne took a quick gulp of tea. It burned her tongue, burned all the way down her throat, but she barely noticed.

She wouldn’t even care so much if it were a simple case of a husband just desiring a younger, more beautiful woman, [or a random, anonymous encounter with a strange man]. She wouldn’t care so much if it were just about sex. But she knew. She saw the look on his face when he was daydreaming, when he thought he was alone. She heard the tunes he hummed to himself, recognised the lightness in his step that wasn’t in it before. She knew it was far, far more serious than that. Her husband was in love.

“Antediluvian,” Marianne said, aloud.

“Huh?” said Rudolf, intelligently.

Marianne stood up from the table and walked a little way along the verandah to sit on the steps. “Four down. Twelve letter word meaning ‘ancient’. The answer is ‘antediluvian’.” She cursed herself for letting her voice crack, but Rudolf didn’t seem to notice.

Many people considered arranged marriage a fairly nasty thing these days. Cruel, they said, to take away a child’s dreams by tying her down so early. Wrong to prevent someone from ever having a normal romantic relationship. So terribly unkind, for the sake of money or prestige, to doom any feelings that this child might have later in her life to being unrequited. Marianne didn’t think it was cruel at all. Just so, so terribly ironic.  
Her marriage to Rudolf had been for the sake of money. Her parents had made many grand speeches about how important it was to preserve aristocratic bloodlines and such, but the fact was that her father was in moderately serious debt, and prevailed upon his old friend, the Emperor, to help him out. Since the royal family were always in need of marriages to provide heirs, and Rudolf the second’s soothsayer (whom he trusted, for some unfathomable reason, above everyone else) had foretold that the third Rudolf would be inclined towards bachelorhood, there was a mutual hurry to get the betrothal down on paper.

Marianne had finished her tea. She swirled the dregs three times, threw the excess tea into the rose bushes on her left and turned the cup anti-clockwise as her aunt had taught her. She stared into the soggy tealeaves, trying to find meaning in the abstract blobs. Did Rudolf II’s fortune-teller use tealeaves, she wondered? Or maybe it was palmistry. Heck, she’d heard of some who read fortunes in pizzas. It didn’t really matter, though; she knew well enough what the future held for her.

She had always known that she was going to marry the Emperor. It was one of those facts of life that she grew up with, like ‘the sun will rise’ and ‘the tides will flow’ and ‘nobody’s gonna put Minister Prozen in no garbage can’. She had also always known that she was never going to get out of it – in Guylos, contracts are of great importance, and her pre-arranged marriage contract was a particularly important because of the status of the parties and because of their mutual dependence on it. To break it would have been selfish, and it would have been the betrayal of both families.  
She had also always known (although it was never said straight out) that in such a marriage, it didn’t matter if she had no great love for her husband. In fact, her family had always hinted to her that if she should fall in love with someone else, an affair was a preferable solution to an extended period of heartache. In her early teens, as she was a huge fan of fairytale romance pulps, she found that particular idea horribly distasteful. The result was an outrageous campaign to convince herself and the world that Rudolf was The One, which terrified the young prince no end. In her youthful zeal, the young bride-to-be refused to consider whether or not she really did love the young prince; she wanted her fairytale romance, and as small an obstacle as her own feelings wasn’t going to stand in her way. Eventually, though…

Marianne gripped the teacup tightly, steeling herself against the treacherous thoughts. She was not going to start crying here, in front of her children, with her husband and all the guards around.

Eventually, though, she realised how useless such a course of action was. She realised that she was pushing her fiancée and childhood friend further away every time they met, so she resigned herself to the fact that she was going to marry a friend and not a lover. Moreover, she realised that she had herself never been in love with the boy in the first place. But regardless of her feelings or his, they were going to be married, and if she thought that if she was going to marry the man, and they couldn’t be lovers, then they should at least get to know each other better.  
She set about getting to know him, and she did. She did get to know him better than anyone else did. She still did. But the process took her to a painfully ironic point. Somehow, trying not to love him failed just as miserably as trying to love him had earlier. She became Rudolf’s closest friend, and she also –

The daughter of Lord [name] does not complain. The closest advisor to the throne does not lose her self-control. The Empress of all Guylos never, never cries…

And she also fell in love with him.

“Thirsty?”

Marianne looked up to see Rudolf sitting down beside her on the steps, handing her a steaming cup of tea.

“I thought you might like another one,” he explained, sheepishly. “I mean, you’ve only had one cup all day, and you normally have at least three just for afternoon tea, so I thought you might like another one. I said that already, didn’t I?” he added, as an afterthought.

“Thank you,” she murmured, taking the cup from him. She didn’t drink it, though, just stared at her murky reflection in the tea.

“I know you feel that you’re useless sometimes, but you don’t know how much I need you. Being the Emperor means that everyone who knows me wants something from me, and I can’t talk openly with ‘friends’ if they’re trying to use me. But I can talk to you, Marianne, and I don’t think you’ve ever realised how much that means to me. It might not seem that much to you, but believe me, Marianne, it’s a lot more than anyone else can give me,”

“Really?” her voice wavered.

“Really,”

Yes, he was a considerate husband, Marianne reflected, finally consenting to recline in his embrace. She didn’t have it so bad. She had her three children, she had a beautiful home and she had a very comfortable lifestyle. Maybe she couldn’t call her husband loving or faithful, as husbands were supposed to be, but at least Rudolf was considerate. But all else aside, she loved him, and that was surely more than enough. She was a very lucky woman, really – how many people got to marry the objects of their unrequited love?

“I just wish you’d tell me what’s going on in your head,” Rudolf murmured into her hair. “You’ve always been such a good friend to me, Marianne. I just wish I could be as good a friend to you,”

Marianne lifted her teacup to her mouth and took a long, burning gulp. It was the steam that was making her eyes water.  



End file.
